Originally published July 20, 2008
By Susan Lampert Smith
Elsewhere in Wisconsin, people tend to tend to roll their eyes at the mere mention of Madison.
You’ll hear it is full of liberals and politicians and nothing like the rest of this solid Midwestern state. But in at least one way, Madison is classically Wisconsin: Its chain of lakes, marshes and woods have, this summer, produced a truly amazing crop of mosquitoes. One Madison surveillance trap sucked in 20,000 mosquitoes in a day.
But, yes, there’s a Madison twist here, too. Because on nice summer evenings, when the rest of humanity wisely flees indoors, swatting at the swarm, somewhere in Madison, Patrick Irwin is baring parts of his linebacker-sized body for science.
The UW-Madison graduate student knows, scientifically speaking, he’s a piece of meat. But he does have his limits.
“I told my adviser that I’ll be the bait, but I won’t shave my legs,’’ said Irwin, a doctoral candidate in Entomology. (His advisor, Entomology Professor Susan Paskewicz, a nationally known mosquito expert, is doing research in Uganda, where mosquito-borne diseases cause death and suffering to millions.)
Part of Irwin’s research involves “human landing studies.” This means during prime biting times, Irwin stations himself in a likely spot, such as a subdivision in the UW Arboretum near Lake Wingra, to count how many mosquitoes land on one lower leg in a 10-minute span.
His record? About 120 in 10 minutes. He sucks them up in a bug vacuum to be taken back to the lab, and counted by genus and species. Right now, he’s testing to see whether those carbon-dioxide-emitting bug traps, sold under names such as Mosquito Magnet, really work.
“We know that they catch a lot of mosquitoes, but what we’re interested in is whether (the traps) reduce biting pressure on humans,’’ he said. Maybe they just attract your neighbors’ mosquitoes or maybe they trap mosquitoes that don’t bite people.
The evidence is still coming in, but let’s put it this way: Irwin hasn’t spent any of his own money on the devices.
For his master’s degree in public health, Irwin surveyed Madison’s storm sewer system, swamps and drainage ditches to find the breeding places for the mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus. And, since he learned the vast majority of Madison’s mosquitoes breed in about a dozen or so “hot spots,” mostly in drainage ditches, he’s come up with a idea for killing mosquitoes without chemicals.
He recently got permission from the Department of Natural Resources to seed the drainage ditches with fathead minnows.
“They’re a native species,’’ Irwin explains, “And fathead minnows really love to eat mosquito larvae.”
If it works, it might be one fatheaded idea from Madison the rest of the state can embrace.
You’ll hear it is full of liberals and politicians and nothing like the rest of this solid Midwestern state. But in at least one way, Madison is classically Wisconsin: Its chain of lakes, marshes and woods have, this summer, produced a truly amazing crop of mosquitoes. One Madison surveillance trap sucked in 20,000 mosquitoes in a day.
But, yes, there’s a Madison twist here, too. Because on nice summer evenings, when the rest of humanity wisely flees indoors, swatting at the swarm, somewhere in Madison, Patrick Irwin is baring parts of his linebacker-sized body for science.
The UW-Madison graduate student knows, scientifically speaking, he’s a piece of meat. But he does have his limits.
“I told my adviser that I’ll be the bait, but I won’t shave my legs,’’ said Irwin, a doctoral candidate in Entomology. (His advisor, Entomology Professor Susan Paskewicz, a nationally known mosquito expert, is doing research in Uganda, where mosquito-borne diseases cause death and suffering to millions.)
Part of Irwin’s research involves “human landing studies.” This means during prime biting times, Irwin stations himself in a likely spot, such as a subdivision in the UW Arboretum near Lake Wingra, to count how many mosquitoes land on one lower leg in a 10-minute span.
His record? About 120 in 10 minutes. He sucks them up in a bug vacuum to be taken back to the lab, and counted by genus and species. Right now, he’s testing to see whether those carbon-dioxide-emitting bug traps, sold under names such as Mosquito Magnet, really work.
“We know that they catch a lot of mosquitoes, but what we’re interested in is whether (the traps) reduce biting pressure on humans,’’ he said. Maybe they just attract your neighbors’ mosquitoes or maybe they trap mosquitoes that don’t bite people.
The evidence is still coming in, but let’s put it this way: Irwin hasn’t spent any of his own money on the devices.
For his master’s degree in public health, Irwin surveyed Madison’s storm sewer system, swamps and drainage ditches to find the breeding places for the mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus. And, since he learned the vast majority of Madison’s mosquitoes breed in about a dozen or so “hot spots,” mostly in drainage ditches, he’s come up with a idea for killing mosquitoes without chemicals.
He recently got permission from the Department of Natural Resources to seed the drainage ditches with fathead minnows.
“They’re a native species,’’ Irwin explains, “And fathead minnows really love to eat mosquito larvae.”
If it works, it might be one fatheaded idea from Madison the rest of the state can embrace.
PHOTO INFORMATION: Patrick Irwin, a UW-Madison graduate student, settles into a spot at the UW Arboretum for “human landing studies” of this year’s amazing mosquito crop./PHOTO by Brent Nicastro
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